Atlantic slavery and
medicine
Wednesday, 27 January 1999
GOALS
- organizational issues
- reconnect with last
class
- tell you three
stories
- watch a fourth story
STRATEGIES
- announcements, 5 min.
- where we were, 20
min.
- three stories, 20
min.
- where we are going, 5
min.
- film, 30 min.
how to cope with this
class
- non-linear
- struggle with the
connections
- lectures
announcements
reading packet
- pick up Accu-Copy
- enter William
- corner of Maynard
- Friday after 2 pm
Cyrus’ office
hours
- Wed, 4:30-6
- Haven 1616
- cboquin@umich.edu
First study
session
Brainstorm session
Shaman Drum
- maps in
- all but Wallman in
- Symp Undertaker coming
later
where we were
- student questions
- Lemba handout plus
- gender ratio, female slavery in
Africa
where we were
smallpox
- not indigenous to western coast
until 17th c.
- role of ships; smallpox increases
on coast
disease
consequences
- no postcontact pattern of mass
death in Africa
- shared enough of Old World
disease pool
- not depopulated by slave
trade
Africa for
foreigners
- high death rates
- prevented serious European
military activity
- gave Africans a commercial
advantage
post-Columbian
exchange
- Africa more important as
donor
- falciparum malaria
- yellow fever
disease and slave
trade
- dysentery and
smallpox
- drought and famine
linked
three stories
- Guinea surgeons
- treponemal travels and
yaws
- Cotton Mather’s
discovery
Guinea surgeons
- see surgeon’s journal,
1789
- Guinea=Sierra Leone to
Benin
- motivated primarily by economic
gain
Thomas Aubrey,
1729
- "The more you preserve of them
for the Plantations the more Profit you will have, and also the
greater Reputation and Wages another voyage. Beside it’s a
case of Conscience to be careful of them as the White
Men."
Captain James Fraser,
1790
- "head money" of one shilling per
slave
- proceeds from one male and one
female "privilege slaves, " which "allowed them in consideration
for their care and trouble in the management of Slaves on board
the ship."
treponemal travels
- yaws to Americas
- venereal syphilis to Africa and
Europe
- identical sphirochetes under
microscope
yaws
- debilitating skin
disease
- yaws houses on
plantations
plantation doctors
- see Dr. David Collins’
Practical Rules, 1811
- afraid to get yaws
- accept African healing
methods
Alexander’s experiment,
1773
- Grenada planter;
- 32 slaves with yaws
- half with mercury
- half with method of an old slave
doctor
- "The Negro method is making them
stand in a Cask where there is a little fire in a pot &
sweating them powerfully in it twice a day, giving them decoctions
of 2 Woods in this Country called Bois Royale & Boix Fer &
applying an Ointment of Lime Juice & Rust of Iron to their
Sores."
Results
- all of the slave doctor’s
patients were well in two weeks
- none of those treated with
mercury
mothers inoculated
children
- before weaned, while in good
health
how medical care
organized?
- See list of John Tharp’s
medical slaves, 1805
- compare values
- what was a "hot-house"? (slave
hospital)
- separate yaws house
Cotton Mather
- and the history of
variolation
- Rev. Cotton Mather of
Boston
- given a slave named
Onesimus
- "Do you have
smallpox?"
Onesimus, "a pretty intelligent
fellow"
- . . . answered, both, Yes, and
No; and then told me, that he had undergone an Operation, which
had given him something of the Small-Pox & would forever
praeserve him from it; adding that it was often used among the
Guramantese, & whoever had the Courage to use it, was forever
free from the fear of Contagion."
Mather made
inquiries:
- other slaves had
operation
- marks to prove it
- ship captains before leaving:
"that the poor creatures may sell for a better price."
Mather sees reports on
Constantinople
- sees parallels with African
practice
- recommends immediate adoption in
England
when smallpox broke out in Boston
in 1721,
- Mather began a massive campaign
in favor of inoculation
- cool reaction from medical
profession
- "I don’t know why
‘tis more unlawful to learn of Africans, how to help against
the Poison of the Small Pox, than it is to learn of our Indians,
how to help against the Poison of a Rattle-Snake."
Boylston and Mather
tract:
- "I have since mett with a
considerable Number of these Africans, who all agree in One story;
That in their country grandy-many dye of the Small-Pox;
But now they learn This Way: . . .
- ". . .People take Juice of
Small-Pox; and Cutty-skin, and Putt in a Drop; then by’nd by
a little Sicky, sicky: then very few little things like
Small-Pox: and nobody dy of it; and no body have
Small-Pox any more. . . .
- ". . .Thus in Africa,
where the Poor Creatures dy of the Small-Pox like Rotten
Sheep, a Merciful GOD has taught them an Infallible
Praeservative. Tis a common practice and is attended with a
Constant Success."
attacks on the "inoculating
ministers":
- verbal: why believe
Africans?
- grenade toosed into Mather’s
house
- inoculated 300 in
Boston
- only 5 or 6 died
- by mid-17th c., inoculation
fairly well accepted on both sides of the Atlantic
what’s coming
up
- Sims’ silver
sutures
- Hottentot Venus
- slave doctoresses
- miscarriage on slave
ship
- Thornton review
discussion
reading Thornton
- focus on key questions for review
discussion session
- how does "trauma" fit
in?
reading Vaughan
- grapple with concepts
- supposed to be
challenging
primary source
packet
mid-term
Equiano
- Igbo
- South-East Nigeria
- slave to abolitionist